69 Love Songs
69 Love Songs is a three-volume concept album by The Magnetic Fields. As its title suggests, it comprises 69 love songs, all written by the band's leader, Stephin Merritt. The album was released in 1999 in the US (as a box set with Merritt interview booklet, and as individual volumes), and in 2000 in Europe and Australia (box set without booklet).
Concept The album was originally conceived as a grandiose musical revue. Stephin Merritt was sitting in a gay piano bar in Manhattan, listening to the pianist's interpretations of Stephen Sondheim songs, when he decided he ought to get into theatre music because he felt he had an aptitude for it. "I decided I'd write one hundred love songs as a way of introducing myself to the world. Then I realized how long that would be. So I settled on sixty-nine. I'd have a theatrical revue with four drag queens. And whoever the audience liked best at the end of the night would get paid", quoted in interview in San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Performers While Stephin Merritt usually sings all lead vocals on Magnetic Fields albums, he needed to provide a richer variety of approaches across the nearly three-hour length of the album. Thus Merritt shares lead vocals with fellow band member (and manager) Claudia Gonson, as well as three guest vocalists: LD Beghtol, Dudley Klute and Shirley Simms. The basic quartet of musicians in The Magnetic Fields is also supplemented on a few songs with accordion and keyboard by novelist Daniel Handler (who interviews Merritt for the booklet that accompanies the US box set version of the album), and with electronic backing tracks by Chris Ewen.
Genres and Themes The variety of 69 Love Songs also derives from the many song genres that Stephin Merritt raids and filters through his own gay miserablist sensibility. Merritt has said "69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love", quoted in interview in The Independent. Some of the genres are obvious, as in the songs Punk Love, Love is Like Jazz, World Love and Wi' Nae Wee Bairn Ye'll Me Beget. Other songs indirectly reference some of Merritt's favourite artists, including Fleetwood Mac (No One Will Ever Love You), Cole Porter (Zebra), Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits), The Jesus and Mary Chain (When My Boy Walks Down the Street), and Irving Berlin (A Pretty Girl is Like...). Several of the songs bend genders as well as genres. For example: a male vocal sings "He's going to be my wife" (When My Boy Walks Down the Street); female vocals sing "bring me back my girl" (Acoustic Guitar) and "Should pretty boys in discos / distract you from your novel" (Come Back from San Francisco). Other common themes include place names (e.g. Dakota, Washington, DC, Lower East Side, North Carolina, Paris, Venice), animals (e.g. bear, goldfish, jellyfish, rabbit, bat, dog, boa constrictor, cockroach), and -- in common with all Merritt's work -- dancing.
Live Performance 69 Love Songs is The Magnetic Fields' most celebrated album to date, and songs from it regularly feature in their live performances. On seven occasions (five in the US, two in London) The Magnetic Fields performed all 69 love songs, in order, over two nights.
Further Information There is a 69 Love Songs wiki site, which provides information and references for each song, plus links and details to relevant interviews, quotes, reviews and influences. Much of this entry is derived from that source.
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